Shifting Lives
by Myuu-Foxgirl
Summary: Kagome is bored. She longs to run free on the wind, like a wolf with no fetters. How does a threat on her life change it, so that she no longer really knows who she is? KagInu rating may go up R&R onegai!


and yet another fic! I swear.. I'll finish one someday.. lol! hmm..I think I'll title this Shifting Lives.. just cause! :D on with the story!  
  
**Shifting Lives  
**  
_Chapter 1_   
  
Kagome Higurashi, princess of the Yureian kingdom, was bored. Not want-to-settle-down-and-have-kids bored, but my-life-isn't-interesting-anymore bored. She sighed, resting her head on the gilded silver window frame, and stared out at the moonlit night. Her father and tutors had always told her that the lands outside the castle weren't safe, but she no longer really cared. If they weren't safe, who cares? She was bored, and needed something interesting to do. And right at that moment, going against the dictations and rules of her household seemed pretty exciting.  
  
If only she could summon up enough energy to be excited about it.   
  
Kagome sighed, and silently padded down the halls and out onto the outer walls of the castle, breathing the deep night air. _Perhaps,_ she thought, resting her small long fingered hands on a crenellation, _it's not so much that I'm bored, as I'm restless. Yes. Restless. That's exactly it._ She climbed on top of the crenellation, and stood there, long black hair whipping around wildly in the strong breeze.  
  
Lately she'd been having dreams; wild, exciting dreams full of action, drama, and adventure. Her innermost heart yearned for this, the wild freedom portrayed so.. restlessly in her dreams. Hauntingly silver eyes opened, as she stared out across the rolling hills, towards the forested mountains around which most of the myths centered. She stood on, ignoring everything except the feel of wind across her skin and the insistent urging in her heart to take off at a dead run towards those mountains.  
  
Until the long, drawn out wolves' cry shattered the night's silence.   
  
Kagome jumped, and then cocked her head, listening as the cry sounded again. In her chest, her heart leaped into a gallop, and she stood there until dawn, listening to the wolves crying their conversations along the hills and valleys, every cry echoing somewhere deep inside of her, in a place she wasn't yet aware existed.  
  
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A large, silver furred, wolf stood on a short hill, staring at the humans castle. There was a figure on top of the walls, and he could tell that it was a she. He stared at her, listening idly to his Packs' conversation that echoed around him as he watched her, and felt an unknown resonation in his chest. As the sun rose over the high mountains behind him, and silhouetted his figure against the ground, he rose up on his hind legs, placing his paws on the large ruined pillar that stood there.  
  
He howled.  
  
A long, deep cry that accented the sun's swift rising across the land, and told his Pack that it was time to go back to their lands. With a last glance at the young woman on the walls, he took off across the hills, a silver blur that went unnoticed by the farmers that had been awoken by his morning cry.  
  
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Kagome moved down the halls with silence, her sleepless night not affecting her ability to walk in silence through the long stone walls. She made her way down to the kitchens, and filched a hot breakfast roll off the large platter, then wandered in the general direction of the library. She opened the door with a simple spell, and then closed it with ease after herself, casting her hand around the room to light all the necessary candles. She padded down the aisles, munching on her roll and browsing the book titles until she found a promising title. She shoved the half eaten roll in her mouth, and left it dangling there as she carefully extracted the tome from it's place.  
  
Carefully juggling the book and her roll, somehow managing not to drop either one, Kagome made her way to the secluded corner of the library where she always read her finds. She settled down in the ancient chair, and slowly stared reading, the archaic script and handwritten words making for slow reading. Slow, but fascinating. She was finished with her roll before she realized that she'd even taken more bites off of it. As she got more and more into the book, she almost didn't hear the approaching footsteps.  
  
Kagome glanced up, and hastily dispelled her witchlight, and sat quietly in the dark, waiting for the footsteps owners to leave her in peace. She listened to them stop, and hold a whispered conversation, the words she caught making her wonder if she was any safer inside the castle than she was outside of it.  
  
"Got his trust......will propose.........hope he will make her comply....." said one, his harsh whispers grating against Kagome's ears in a most unsatisfactory way.  
  
"Indeed......and master Naraku......she will be broken............learn her place............stop this.....unholy..........Pack needs a new leader.....not...mutt.." this last comment confused Kagome, but she couldn't hear any more, as the two speakers moved away. The last thing she heard from either figure was her name, spoken with a hiss that promised something evil was coming her way.   
  
When she was certain she was alone once more, Kagome sat in the dark, trying to puzzle out the meaning behind those words. After a while, she shrugged and placed her thoughts on the back burner as she summoned her witchlight back, and went back to reading. Yet even as she read the ancient tome, a niggling thought at the back of her mind told Kagome that her life would soon change, and wouldn't be the same again.  
  
Ever.  
  
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(A/N: ok, that'd be a real good place to stop it... but am I really that mean? hmm... yes and no. I'll write some more. tee hee)  
  
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Kaede, an old seer, moved down the halls towards the royal library. Her old bones were aching in the cold of the night, but the threat to her princess made her forget her aches and pains. Out of all the other inhabitants, only Kaede knew where the young princess disappeared to for hours on end, every day. She stopped at the large doors, and inserted a rusted medallion into the slot it was intended for, then walked in and murmured the word that made the door lock.  
  
She shuffled down the long aisles, fondly stroking the bindings of some of the books, books she'd read in her youth and had fond memories of reading on stormy days and restless nights. She came to the small, rarely used alcove and smiled at the sight of princess Kagome sprawled across the ancient chair, hair still obviously windswept from her night of standing on the high walls, and her mind just as obviously absorbed in the tome she was reading. Kaede watched as Kagome frowned and tried to puzzle out some word or another, then smile in delight as she figured out what it was.  
  
"Ahem." Kaede cleared her throat, and made an apologetic gesture as the princess jumped and looked up. "Forgive me. But I have something of utmost importance concerning your person, your grace. You are in grave danger, child, and I know not how to stop it. My mind is going the same direction my body went long since, and I was not graced with a full vision, only snippets.  
  
"But you must leave the castle. Where you will go and what you shall do, I know not. But where-ever it is, it will be much safer than this castle.  
  
"I, myself, would make for the Vulpine Mountains. It is said that there are spirits that reside in the forest there that will shelter anyone who comes to their forests with no evil intents surrounding them. You have little time to decide, your grace, and I can only hope that you choose well. For your life and very existence hinge on this."  
  
"Aren't those the same thing, Kaede-baachan?" Kagome asked, hiding the fact that the old womans words had confirmed the niggling thought at the back of her mind.  
  
"Not at all, child." Kaede answered, smiling at the young woman. "If you lose your life, you die, but are still remembered and live on in that fashion. When you lose your very existence, it is as if you were never alive. Never born, never nursed at your mother's breast, never thought of with fondness, or exasperation, or worry. Nothing about you is remembered. Not even the simplest quirk of your personality."  
  
"Oh.... Um, I guess that means that losing ones existence is bad, then?"  
  
"That, child, is verily the understatement of the year."  
  
"No need to be sarcastic, Kaede-baachan. And, really, it was a rhetorical question." Kagome made a face at her mentor and friend, the only person she really opened up to anymore.  
  
"Rhetorical does not mean that I cannot answer it, now then does it, Kagome-hime?" Kaede arched her brows at the princess, who shrugged and set the book down on a table, then sat upsidedown on the chair, with her back across the seat and her long legs hooked over it's back, her head hanging over the edge of seat with her ravens-wing black hair spilling across the ancient mahogany flooring.  
  
"Ooh, blood rushing to my head!" Kagome then shook her head, grinning at Kaede from her upsidedown view. "Um, no it doesn't. But on to another subject. Tell me more about the Vulpine mountains. They sound intriguing, Kaede-baachan."  
  
Kaede laughed - she had ever been amused by the princess' eager curiosity and suppressed hunger for an adventurous life - and settled onto the chair opposite of the young, upsidedown, princess, and closed her eyes.  
  
"As you wish, your grace."  
  
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oooooh!! since when do I write a whole philosophical chapter?? XD anyone who can guess who the silver wolf is gets a cookie! and homemade chocolate haystack!! yummy! anyways... next chapter should come out sometime tomorrow.. and if any of you want updates for my other stories, tell me so in your review!! cause I need a good kick in the ass for all of them right now!   
  
Ja matta, minna-san!  
  
--Myuu 


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